Chorzów

One final post from Poland, July 2025. 
This one featuring Chorzów in the rain, football friendlies and brew pubs.

Head northwest from Katowice and at some point you'll cross into neighbouring Chorzów, one of the contiguous cities that make up the sprawl of the GZM metropolitan area.
The average tourist is probably less likely to venture far into Chorzów beyond a visit to the expansive Silesia Park.  

I was here for the football.

Not the Ekstraklasa big-match clash I would have liked.  Far from it.
But with the league starting very early in Poland this summer, clubs were squeezing their friendly fixtures in at the beginning of July and Ruch were taking on Puszcza Niepołomice.

Ruch Chorzów have a super old-school stadium with one grandstand and a trad oval of seats open to the elements.  But a glimpse through the railings showed this was looking a bit battered and bruised and it hasn't been used for over a year.
The friendly game, meanwhile, was taking place on a training pitch behind the old stadium.

12 noon kick-off.  Waved in for free by the stewards, souvenir mug bulging in my raincoat pocket.
I counted roughly 130 folks stood on the bank or perched on the little bank of seats.
So, more successful than the Club World Cup then. 
With no cover and the rain settling in for the afternoon, I didn't think I'd last the whole 90-minutes.

Yet I really quite enjoyed it.  A 1-1 scoreline in a closely contested game.

Right, time for a post-match Tyskie, I think.

The closest establishment listed as 'pub' on Google maps was Sayonara located on the main road just a couple of minutes from the turnstiles.

Sayonara (BoWiD 45, 41-506 Chorzów)
I was kinda hoping for a cosy bar in which to warm up - hells bells, it was July and after a couple of hours on a grassy bank watching football I was wishing I had my gloves.
Sadly, Sayonara was not a cosy bar.
Much of the interior was hidden away with the lights out, the only indoor option being a deep corner-hugging brown leather sofa under a fish tank and a shelf of magazines.  More like a barber shop waiting area than pub.

But I reckon no-ones blogged about Sayona ever before (or Ruch Chorzów friendlies for that matter (I should really check Pubmeister's blog before making that claim).
So I was happy.

Five lagers on offer: Pilsner Urquel, Lech, Tyskie, Kozel, or Książęce.  I stuck with Tyskie, then felt guilty as the young chap at the bar tried to conjure up his English for 'change the barrel'.

Sat under the umbrellas on the terrace, I hatched a plan to sample more interesting beers from two Chorzow breweries.

I swigged the last of the Tyskie, returned the glass to the bar (is that a thing in Poland?) and scooted around the corner to catch a bus for a 10-minute ride through the backstreets to the dual carriageway Katowica.
A short-cut on foot through the Paczka Galeria shopping centre, then into the huge Silesian Park, where I passed the stadium where Ruch currently play their competitive fixtures.
Still raining...

Ten-minutes walk into the park took me to the brewpub by the lake.
Great location.  All it needs in a bit of July sunshine.

Browar Przystań (aleja Klonowa 4, 41-516 Chorzów)
First signs weren't good when stepping inside: a waiting area with velvet curtains and cocktail bar style furniture; A-boards suggesting you have your wedding reception here; and a 'please wait to be seated' sign.  I skipped past that and asked if I was okay to just have a beer, giving me the chance to scrutinize the pump clips and get served at the bar.

Standard brewpub beer choices here: pils, wheat, marzen, honey.
I went with the 'Marcowe', 4.8%, way too thin and watery for my liking.  Almost twice the price of my earlier Tyskie.
This was one of the few places I encountered that was cash-only - yet looked the least likely place ever to not take card payments.

I was the only soul foolish enough to walk through the park in the rain to a brewpub on a midweek afternoon and had the whole place to myself.  Which didn't make for a thrilling visit.

To be fair, I did come back with Mrs PropUptheBar a couple of days later when the weather improved and the terrace overlooking the lake is a great place to sit and sip a beer.  The Pils proved to be a slightly better option that the marzen.

There's another brewpub in Chorzów that I'd visited years back and was keen to return to.
It's located in a nice neighbourhood with some grand four-storey mansions lining the streets, but the pub itself doesn't make for much of a picture.

Minibrowar Reden (Jana III Sobieskiego 17, 41-530 Chorzów)
A few steps below pavement level, Reden is an L-shaped traditional bar, brewing equipment on view, although I have a feeling beers are now concocted on an industrial estate a couple of miles away.
Their own pils, midowy (honey), cold IPA and sour ale were available on tap, a couple more options in bottles.

But I only had (foolhardy) eyes for the  draft 11% 'Imperial Porter'.  The bar staff went straight for the large glass - no qualms about selling double-digit brews in micro measures only here.  I intervened and went small, with the plan to be able to walk in a straight line when I got back to Katowice.

A great run of music: Dio 'Rainbow in the Dark', 'Black Velvet', 'Lets Get Together', Gary Moore's 'Parisian Walkways'.
All quite pleasant with a boozy, chewy coffee and chocolate porter and a good soundtrack.

But I had to move on and get back to Katowice where Mrs PropUptheBar had done everything she needed to do for the day and was diving into craft beers at Upojeni.

Upojeni Multitap (Świętego Jana 10, 40-000 Katowice)
The one beer hotspot that was missing from the last post.
Just off the main road in a smart refurbished arcade, this is a stylish bar set over two floors, quickly filling up with post-work custom shortly after we arrived.

I opted for the very smooth and easy-going (well it would be compared to 11% stout, wouldn't it) 'Milołak' from ReCraft.  A milk stout brewed in Świętochłowice a few miles to the west.

We stuck around and ordered pizza and another dark brew, this time Browar Hajer's 5.5% 'Farorz'.

With a good number of craft beer bars in Katowice, I began to take those beer boards for granted.  Yet I miss them now I'm back in Oxford.
Nothing like it here, and we're about to lose our Brewdog which, whatever you think of them, always had something interesting on the drinks menu.

That's Poland wrapped-up on the blog.
Back to Birmingham, London and Hampshire for the next few posts.

A Katowice Craft Beer Bonanza

A return to Katowice - my last visit being in December 2018 when daylight hours were in short supply and it rained incessantly.  I was looking forward to seeing the city in the sunshine. 
Only to arrive in July to temps in the mid-teens and pouring rain.

One thing to mention about Katowice is that you're not going to come away with a stunning selection of pretty pub pictures.
No Bull & Bladder or Lamp Tavern's here.  In fact, Wolverhampton Spoons would probably be the good-looker in Katowice.
Hence, lots of pictures of pub/bar doorways in this post... 

Klub Podróżników Namaste (Jana III Sobieskiego 27, 40-082 Katowice)
This was our first port of call on arrival in the city, braving the heaviest of the rain to navigate the streets to the east of the central drag to reach it.

It translates as travellers bar, so I figured I may be able to regale the clientele with tales of trips to Aylesbury and Dunstable.  Except, the traveller pictures on the walls were more of the intrepid reaching a Himalayan peak variety.  And the clientele was very low on numbers on a Tuesday teatime.

This was a thoroughly nice bar, though.  It consisted several rooms, the brick walls between part knocked through to create one nicely cluttered and live-in space.  

 

There were five draft beers on offer from Poland and Czechia, all of the pale lager/pale ale variety, with a decent selection of bottles for those craving something different.
I picked the Browar Jana 'IPA' - which wasn't much like an IPA, but did a good job of washing down the big zapiekanka open baguettes.

An eclectic playlist in the travellers bar alternating between local obscurities and 80s pop. 

If you've made it to the Klub Podróżników Namaste, I'd recommend popping into the Czech basement bar on the corner of the same street - Hospoda (Gliwicka 6, 40-079 Katowice) which will dish you up mugs of Bernard beer to drink in a warren of cave-like dark rooms.

On day one, though, we took advantage of a break in the weather and trekked through the centre of the city to one of the craft beer hotspots where much of the Untappd action is.

Browariat Craft Beer Zone (Francuska 11, 40-015 Katowice)
Another basement bar with steps leading down from an unspectacular entrance.  Those steps take you down to a cracking bar, beer list on the wall to one side, mind-boggling bottle and can listings at the side of the counter.

Beyond the bar are several snug spaces and sunterraenean rooms with vaulted ceilings in a bar that is full of character.
We gravitated to the furthest point where you get retro Euro beer posters on the walls and a shelf with vintage radios and a fine collection of German beer mugs.

I sipped my Moon Lark Brewery 'One More...Rauchbier' - a properly smokey marzen, on the way to matching Schlenkerla, but not quite.
Pocketed a good selection of beer mats for the growing collection.
And frowned at the sleepy jazz music choice of The Modern Sound of Harry Beckett LP.

The whole place livened up quickly, with a sudden influx of customers and a much-needed change in tempo of the music.  I contemplated staying for the imperial stout, but thought better of it (in a rare moment of sensibility).

Distractions on the way back included building-sized street art and vertical parking.

We'd be back in on the same street as Browariat a couple of days later. 
Directly across the road from the craft bar is Cybertap...

CyberTap: Pizzeria i samoobsługowy pub (Francuska 12, 40-015 Katowice)
This is the first time I've ventured into a serve-yourself bar since discovering one in Mannheim in 2018. 
Here's the process at Cybertap...
💳 Procure a card, topped up with zloty, from the staff at a small counter to one side.
🥛 Grab a glass. 
👉 Pick a beer.  Piwne Podziemie 'The Bitters '77' has a punk band on the picture, that'll do.
💳 Tap the card and get a 5-second countdown in which you need to start pouring.
😟 Panic.
🍺 Come away with 2cm liquid and 10cm froth.

Here's someone who looks like they'll do a much better job at pouring their beer than I did...

The bonus is that you can try as little or as much as you want.  The cost of your serving is displayed on the screen, rising as you keep pouring.  As I'm the type of person who watches the fare rise in a taxi in horror and contemplates getting out a mile from home, none of my measures were very large.

There were around a dozen 'interesting' beers (heavy on the Ziemia Obiecana brewery), plus your bog-standard lager, white/red/rose wines (not for the connoisseur) and - alarmingly - self-serve spirits.
Enough for us to settle in for quite a evening session.  Anyone who claims we degenerated into louts mixing rum into the dark ale must surely be mishtaken.

Katowice's big bustling entertainment street is Mariacka.
Left to my own devices to try and find somewhere to meet Mrs PropUptheBar on a Thursday evening, I opted for the least trendy looking establishment on the street, where I guessed I could get served at the bar rather than led to a table.

Piwiarnia Mariacka (Mariacka 6, 40-000 Katowice)
In the UK this would be the Craft Union.  A functional, if not hip, bar with shiny wooden floors, lots of TV screens, no-nonsense bar staff, and a mixed non-touristy crowd.

Beers from Kozel and Książęce, the latter sound exotic until you realise they're part of the same mega-brand brewing corp as Tyskie and Lech.
A Książęce IPA for me - tasting every bit like a lager and nothing like an IPA.  But competitively priced at 14 zloty, less than £2.90 for a half litre of 5.4% fizz.

Alternatively, £7.15 for your big jug of Tyskie.  A tenner for a wooden platter of brown stuff.  I don't think Mistrzowski skład is mixed salad.

Just across the road from Piwiarnia is a brewpub on the ground floor of a Best Western.

Restauracja Browar Mariacki (Mariacka 15, 40-014 Katowice)
It's a brewpub, yet doesn't really look like one.  Not a bit of shiny brewing equipment in sight, in what's a smart minimalist set-up, complete with polite serving staff and knifes, forks and serviettes in little paper envelopes at the tables.

When we were last here in the depths of winter they served some decent strong dark brews.  Mango and passion fruit wheat beer was the summer special - less appealing for me, but Mrs PropUptheBar's pick.  I opted for the regular AIPA 16°, a reasonable 7% American IPA, accompanying possibly the best food we had all week.

Next up was Absurdalna, which has relocated since I was last here - now situated on the restaurant-lined pedestrianised Staromiejska.

Absurdalna (Staromiejska 9, 40-012 Katowice)
Nice barrels of flowers outside which could be the equivalent of the UK good hanging basket = good beer rule (not completely proven as yet).
Plunging into that very dark-looking interior we at least found a good selection of beer.
Twelve to pick from on the electronic display above the bar, all from Browar Starkraft, covering pretty much all tastes and some beyond (Apple Pie Cherry Blackberry Graff, anyone?).

It's a moodily lit place, illuminated by the odd bit of neon, cushioned slouch seating on the windowsills, tables with oddball circuit board designs...

Hmmm...I was going to say I had the dry stout in Absurdia but that picture suggests differently.
Do I have foggy craft beer memory, or was I just distracted by the fact that bits of those tables lit up when you put your glass down in different places.

And the final bar in this post is arguably the best in Katowice...

Biała Małpa (3 Maja 38, 40-097 Katowice)
Head through the archway off the bustling central street with its shops and trams, and you'll find the mini Biała Małpa empire: Mexican street food on the right, craft beer on the left, covered seating and outdoor bar in the middle and a bunch more al-fresco tables beyond.

The beer list was a pretty superb best-of-Poland selection, plus a couple of imports (including a Schlenkerla Weichsel Rotbier, a cherry wood version which I've not seen before and had to try).

Just one gripe (perhaps two if I grumble about the single gents WC).
And that's the minimal difference between small and large beers - 19 zloty - 22 zloty.
That's how I came away with an 11% 'Portermas Smoked Plums and Cocoa Nibs' by Pinta in a pint glass.  'Cos why go for small when the large is 75p-or-so more?  To be fair, I got a very big foamy head on that hand-pulled (!!!) impy porter and I wasn't about to complain about it considering how much damage a half litre of double-digit beer could potentially cause.

This is a bar we made a couple of visits to and we tried a fair few things from Mexican gose to Dubai chocolate porter.
There's a bit of Go action in the pic below, the one chap taking on two opponents in two games at once.  Plus a vertical queue to the bar.  And that door to the solitary gents rest room.

That's quite enough waffling on about craft bars, I think.
I'll leave you with a shot of the old Katowice mine buildings, now converted to a must-see modern museum and art gallery.

And - probably - the cities stand-out building...oh look, the rain's stopped...

Na zdrowie!

Łódź - Craft Bars, Architecture & Priest Live!

So, what had I come to Łódź for?
Perhaps to marvel at Post Industrial architecture, learn about Polish cinema, promenade up Piotrkowska (one of the longest commercial streets in the world at 3.1 miles).
But mostly to drink craft beer and listen to heavy metal.

We spent our Sunday morning in the film museum, which is a delight of a place.  Even if Polish cinema and old cameras and projectors aren't your cup of tea, Scheibler’s palace, in which the museum is located, is rather spectacular. 

There was a fascinating montage of the many buildings in the city which have been cinemas over the years, each one morphing on the screen to a modern shot of what they look like now.
So many long-lost cinemas, not one of them converted to a JD Wetherspoon.

Having spent much longer than anticipated in the film museum, we ambled up the road to take a look at another converted red-brick factory. 

Monopolis was formerly the site of a vodka distillery and bottling plant, although we diligently skipped the vodka museum incorporated into the redevelopment.

(Also worth a look are the recently completed EC1 next to the train station with its eye-catching architecture and the more commercial Manufactura which started the whole post-industrial boom in the city).
We caught the tram back to Piotrkowska where I got rather carried away snapping pictures of the stunning buildings...

And where we paired savoury pancakes with bottled blueberry milk stout.

 

On Sunday afternoon we met up with an old friend and work colleague in Łódź,  Despite this being Jola's home town, the craft beer revolution had bypassed her.
"You're where? Piwoteka Narodowa...never heard of it."

Would Mrs PropUptheBar be able to go one step further and convince her to order 0.3l of the Nowomiejski Tomato Gose?  Nope.

Piwoteka Narodowa Craft Beer & Food (Gen. Romualda Traugutta 4, 90-107 Łódź)

Of the 20 beers listed on a blackboard to the side of the bar, all but one were from their own Piwoteka Brewery.
I made a bold choice of the 'Konska Dawka 2025', a black saison with horseradish and various berries.  "Gherkin water!" declared Mrs PropUptheBar, rather put-out that I'd picked this and had the gaul to criticise her (challenging) tomato gose.

The bar is deceptively large, split into three seating areas, although it's on the stark functional side and would benefit from some Bass memorabilia and general brewery tat.

With Grodziskie in both Turkish or American styles, a cola nuts sour, and gooseberry ale as some of the more unusual offerings, this is a bar that will keep the adventurous beer aficionado busy for some time.
I steered clear of anything too off-beat and went all-in for the 'Od Morza Do Morza' 10% imperial porter - very nice, yet quite inappropriate for mid-afternoon on a hot sunny day.

Just one door along the street is Jaberwocky.

Jaberwocky (Gen. Romualda Traugutta 4, 90-107 Łódź)
Where we found speed-dating in full-swing, retreating to the farthest corner of the room to escape the hubbub of thirty-odd people nattering in unison.  Despite the event being hosted in a beer bar, none of the participants seemed to actually be drinking anything.  Could it be that double-IPAs don't help when speed dating?

Much less choice here, with 6 of the 12 spaces on the beer board filled - the lagers and NEIPAs seeming pedestrian after the craziness next door. 
A sensible Trzech Kumpli 'Wonder Haze' 4.8% New England pale ale for me.

Right, let's find somewhere that isn't on the most obvious list of Łódź beer bars. 

Rademenes Drink Bar (Piotrkowska 83 lewa oficyna, 90-423 Łódź),
Tucked through an archway off Piotrkowska, we were a little uncertain heading down a quiet side street, residents in apartments leaning precariously out of 4th floor windows above us on a balmy summer evening.

The wooden terrace covering the outdoor benches of the bar, however, had a bit of a Santa's grotto look to it...

There were a handful of customers on the outdoor seats, not a soul within except for a rather eccentric owner conversing with his pub cat.
Look at it though...

What a cracking place.
And what a bottle selection!

The problem was trying to identify the bottles along those two long shelves.  Almost as challenging as trying to see the keg fonts at the back of the bar in the Grapes in Oxford.
I probably missed some rare finds, ending up with Browar Gosciszewo's 'Komtur', which I disappointingly realised I'd had before in a Beer 52 box.
Just don't let the gaffer talk you into trying the fearsomely strong 'craft' flavoured vodka in the fridge.

Let me leap one day ahead - on this fearsomely long post - to the 7th of July.

Where options were limited in Łódź on a Monday.
Trad museum and gallery closing day, leaving tourists with no choice but to sit in the chain brew pub all afternoon.

Located on a prime spot along Piotrkowska, the Bierhalle is part of a small chain that originated in Warsaw.  We'd visited the Warsaw branch years ago, so I didn't really feel we needed to do this one any more than I need to tick off all the Brewhouse & Kitchens in the UK.  But with several recommended bars shut at the beginning of the week, this eventually lured us in.

Bierhalle (Piotrkowska 100, 90-004 Łódź)
Inside the grand-looking Deco buillding were tiled floors, decorative hogshead barrels, fixed wooden booth seating surrounding a big central staircase, and the odd feature of a managers office in a windowed wooden booth in the corner.  Giving the boss the chance to watch over their traditionally frocked staff as they lay Bavarian chequered table clothes in front of customers.
There were four beers available - a pils, marzen, wheat, and altbier.  I opted for the 5.8% marzen - Marcowe - which was...hmmm...okay.  Which isn't a great verdict considering the size of my glass...

Much more to my taste was a bar one block away from the tourist drag, not necessarily looking the most promising as you approach through a car park and up the crumbling steps.

Pub Spółdzielczy Łódź (al. Tadeusza Kościuszki 80/lok. 309, 90-437 Łódź)
There is a bright terrace at the front with big picture windows, shared with the coffee shop/bakery next door.  The main room of the Spółdzielczy pub was a rectangular affair, dimly lit, with 'how beer is made' murals on one wall.
Spółdzielczy Browar is actually located on the north coast above Gdynia, this Łódź location being labelled as a brew-pub but actually being an outpost bar.

An exhausting twenty beers on draft, not to mention the cans and bottles in the fridge.
Seven of the draft beers were their own concoctions, so I opted for their 5.5% dry stout.  Nice, but no match for the monster 'Lódvuk', a 14.1% Baltic stout aged in bourbon barrels.  Available in a sensible 0.1l measure at just over £4.  And quite superb.   

When we arrived there was a fella on the patio sketching a picture of his companion, one chap inside talking to himself, and us.  By the time we left (which was quite a while later - there were a lot of good things on that beer list) there was a queue to the bar and a decent crowd in.  Many of the customers were wearing Judas Priest t-shirts, for the Midlands rockers were in town this evening and PropUptheBar had procured tickets.

The show was in the Atlas Arena, situated in the bottom corner of Piłsudskiego Park, next door to the ŁKS Łódź football ground, a 5-minute tram ride from the Unicorn Stable tram stop.

I'm really not one of the "metal maniacs" that Rob Halford kept on addressing the crowd as.  I hadn't even got the memo that I was supposed to be wearing a black t-shirt. 
And support act Gloryhammer, with their wizard capes and banks of power-metal keyboards were really not to my taste.
But...Judas Priest?  Hell, yeah! 🎸

On a hot evening, the ventilation in the arena was just right, allowing Halford to stalk the stage in three-quarter length leather jacket.  The AV and light show was great.  The kids (aged roughly 50'ish) at the front roared along and pumped fists in the air.
Perhaps occasionally one-too-many fast double-headed guitar solos for my liking, in a set that barely paused for breath.  But I was blown away by the broodingly sinister 'Touch of Evil', and the majestic pummeling which was 'Painkiller'.  

The set finished with pop-tastic shout-along 'Living After Midnight'.
It's a long time since I did anything but sleep after midnight.  My idea of "rockin' til the dawn" in the dubious karaoke bar next to the hotel was kyboshed by Mrs PropUptheBar in the name of good taste and common sense.